Reset Your Barcode: Five Steps to a Financial Reset

By Marvin Reynolds

A new way to think about money that can transform your life and turn struggle into success.
 
Wealth cannot be created or destroyed. It already exists.
You cannot spend your way to prosperity.
Money doesn’t buy happiness. It buys options.
 
These are just a few of the financial principles explored in this wise, mind-opening guide to understanding money and its role in our lives—and how we can find our way to financial freedom.
 
In order to have a strong global and national economy, we must strengthen the economy of each and every family. Reset Your Barcode exposes the myths and misconceptions that surround money in the modern world, and introduces time-tested strategies and unique, easy-to-use tools to help you make daily decisions that reduce your financial stress—and bring lasting value to your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781614487791

Marvin Reynolds

Marvin Reynolds is the founder of Reset YOUR Barcode Training Academy, a training/consulting company that helps financial advisors, individuals, and organizations achieve breakthrough performance with breakthrough preparation. As a trainer and speaker, Marv draws upon his many years of sales, management, and leadership experience to help people across the country implement his unique 5-step process to break through personal barriers and achieve financial success. Marv knows that great potential is a heavy burden until you master the 5 steps of resetting your barcode and turn your potential into power. Having overcome overwhelming adversity himself, Marv understands the challenges and misinformation that many people deal with. Through personal experience and observation, Marv has identified the core principles for developing the character and competence needed to achieve real wealth and happiness.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No one ever succeeds alone. Nowhere is this statement truer than it is with me. This book could not be possible if it were not for the help and support of countless people. Though I could never name them all, I would like to make special mention of a few.

Special thanks to my wife Julie for putting up with me all these years. Without her unique gifts to our relationship, I would only be half a person. Thanks to my business partner, Brett Peterson. His ideas and faith in me—along with freeing up the necessary time to undertake such a project—is worth more than he could possibly know. Thanks to Kalie Chamberlain for her skill in formatting and editing this work. Thanks to Morgan James Publishing for having faith in me and giving their support to getting this book published.

And special thanks to my family, friends, and clients for their support and encouragement in this and the many other activities I could not have pursued without their help.

INTRODUCTION

Part I: Reset Your Barcode and Reset Your Life

What does it mean to reset your barcode? First, let’s talk about the barcode, and then we will talk about what it means to reset it and why it is so important.

A barcode, otherwise known as the Universal Product Code (UPC), appears on most products. When scanned, it reveals the assigned value of the product. This allows for a very efficient checkout process and inventory management system.

Whether we know it or not, we are like these products—we each have an invisible barcode on our person. When we come in contact with other people, we quickly scan them and assign a perceived value. We also keep track of an inventory of desired qualities, or value, we expect from other people. When we perform our scan, if we like the value revealed, we pursue a further relationship with that individual. If we perceive that the value we are looking for isn’t there, we usually pass on the relationship, at least for now.

Why Assign a Person Value?

Of course, assigning a value to another person is a very difficult and dangerous thing to do. Nevertheless, we do it. Because we want to be successful and happy, we instinctively know that for this to happen, we must surround ourselves with successful and happy people. In other words, achieving success requires the help and cooperation of others. Cooperation demands that each participant in the cooperative be able to make a contribution of some kind. Just like the Little Red Hen, we don’t like to share the fruits of our labor with someone who won’t contribute to the effort required to enjoy success.

Since making a valuable contribution to any cooperative effort is so vital, it helps to know where real contribution comes from. All contributions are based on a person’s character and competence. These two elements are the foundation upon which all contributions are built. Character is what a person believes and what they do based on those beliefs, and competence represents their skill and wise use of knowledge.

When character and competence add up to represent the contribution you are looking for, you usually assign a pretty high value to that individual and proceed to develop a cooperative relationship with them. Naturally, when those elements are not present in sufficient quantity, the relationship is not pursued, and the offer to cooperate is not extended.

Reading a Barcode Accurately

Reading the barcode and assigning the proper value is difficult and takes a great deal of practice. Sometimes, people are so unsure of the value they provide that they will try to divert your attention away from character and competence by moving their barcode from an obvious and useful location and place it where they want you to focus your attention. For example, some will try to place it on an object such as a luxury automobile or a big fancy house, brand name clothing, or even different parts of their anatomy. All this is meant to keep the focus on superficial things rather than expose their deficiency of high-quality character and well-developed competence. Don’t get me wrong. I’m okay with nice cars and homes and clothing. That’s beside the point. What we really want when we scan each other is an accurate reading of the quality—the character and competence that can substantially contribute to a cooperative effort leading to success and happiness.

So why is it so important to reset your barcode? Because when you are scanning others, they are scanning you. As you look for character and competence in them, they are looking for it in you.

Why Should I Reset My Barcode?

Because you can’t change anyone else, you must concentrate on changing you. What is it about your character and competence that creates a high-value reading sufficient to make you an attractive contributor to their cooperative? What values drive your performance and make you valuable to them? If you are not continuously making improvements in your character and competence, which will affect the reading on your barcode, you will substantially limit your opportunities for success.

Part II: Values, Principles, and Virtues

From the day we are born, we begin experiencing life. We learn from watching others; we learn from personal experience; we learn from observing nature and our environment; we learn from friends and teachers. Much of what we learn is good and useful. Some of what we learn is harmful and limiting. Because what we learn has a powerful impact on the values we choose, and because our values eventually shape our character, it is critical to do a self-assessment from time to time to see if our values are helping or hurting us.

Once our values are established, they become our automatic responses. Automatic responses are what make up our presets. And, of course, we all have them. Our presets can have some benefits in that they allow us to do many things on autopilot; in other words, we can act without giving much thought to what we are doing. However, sometimes this can be very detrimental because when we operate on autopilot without thinking, we may be holding ourselves in a flight pattern that will fly us into the ground. Being slightly off course can leave us miles away from our destination.

Presets are great if they are helping us get where we want to go, but too often, this is not the case. The evidence for this is overwhelming. All we have to do is watch the news, and it becomes painfully obvious that not all presets are healthy.

Understanding that our presets are in large measure responsible for the value reading that shows up when our barcode is scanned makes it important—no, essential—to evaluate and periodically reset our presets so we can get past the things that hold us back and move forward to create a high value reading of character and competence when our barcode is scanned. Resetting our barcode is something that we can and should do over and over as we strive to reach our full potential and the ability to make our maximum contribution.

Doing a reset of any kind must begin with an understanding of values, principles, and virtues and how they affect every aspect of our lives.

Values—Our Personal Preferences

It’s absolutely critical to understand that values are actually nothing more than personal preferences. For some, this statement is a little difficult to swallow at first because their values represent who they are. Once we choose our values, they become important to us. In fact, if we value them enough, they begin to take on a sacred nature. If you don’t believe me, just try telling someone that their values are wrong; then, brace yourself for a battle. Most of us will fight like a wildcat to justify and preserve our values.

The problem here is that values can be good and bad. Just because we value something does not make it right or wrong, good or bad. For example, throughout time, there have been those who held the value that freedom was only for the privileged few. Most people today, at least in this country, believe that all men were given certain unalienable rights, such as freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

Principles—Laws of Nature

It’s a good idea to periodically compare our values to principles. Principles are natural laws, the kind you don’t get to vote on. They are universal, timeless, and changeless; they have consequences and they are impartial. In other words, principles just are. They don’t care if you value them or not. You simply comply with them and receive a positive consequence or violate them and receive a negative one.

You can tell when a concept or practice is based on a principle or not by simply observing how it plays out over time. If a concept is truly principle-based, it will always lead to order. Order is what you get when you have peace, harmony, beauty, cooperation, and success over the long term. When you are not dealing with a principle-based concept or practice, you will always end up with chaos. That’s what you get when you continually have to intervene and do patch work to make something work out.

What If a Principle Is False?

Supporting and following a false principle is what I call building on the beach while the tide is out. At the moment, it may look